The Dead Garden
by Lalieth
Summary: Kikyou reflects on the possible causes of her downfall. Drabble.


The Dead Garden

By Lalieth

After they took nearly everything, the only tiny bit left was hate. Was she bitter? Damn right.

But in the numb haze of her post-death, Kikyou found a new love: darkness. She preferred to hide by day. Not in a cave or under a rock or something ridiculous like that, but in a tenacious occupation of a genuine, nurturing, wise priestess. Those she tended did not know a thing about her, at least not anything that was the truth, so that was how she hid.

But the darkness. The beautiful and honest darkness. With it she need not hide. The darkness understood her, did not judge her, did not blame her. The darkness loved her. So she hid by day and walked by night under canopies of black trees alive with nightbirds and heavy with the scent of sap and flowers. Fireflies never failed to show up for the party and above the stars kept their endless vigilance. And they never judged, nope, not once.

So she did not mind lifting a tear-stained face to the uncaring stars. It was okay to wring her cold clay hands in her hair and weep in consternation against the bark of some oblivious tree. The nightbirds fluttered near her and above her and never once did they mock her shameless heart.

Then morning would come and she would appear tireless by the beds of the sick and the dying, looking for all the world as though she had only just risen from a night of restful, and innocent, slumber. She looked into their eyes and knew they never suspected the truth, nor would they accept if they had known. Story of her life.

Faced with their ignorant trust, she would think back over what might have been the source-spring of her downfall.

It was true that she had genuinely loved Inuyasha, that she never suspected the wormhole heart of Onigumo, and that she honestly believed that she was the one who had been betrayed. She was duped. But, she admitted only to herself, there was a dark seed planted long ago. It was before Naraku, before Onigumo, before Inuyasha, even before that hapless fool Tsubaki. It was the Jewel.

No. That was not precisely true either. It was her occupation. She had gone too far in when she realized that she did not want to be a great miko, responsible for guidance, peace, and purity. It merely took the appearance of the stupid Jewel to make her see it.

And Inuyasha, in his naked need that she uncovered and that he later lost, was simply a way out.

She surrendered her so-called purity to Inuyasha several months before the appearance of Naraku, a fact no one suspected. But when she drove the greedy and vain Tsubaki away, she did not know then that her natural fertility had already outwitted the pesseries of bamboo paper. Then the first day of her cycle came and went without event. With calm competence she mixed a potion that a medicine woman had assured that in such cases of trouble could expel "even the burden of conscience". Then she just as calmly dumped it in a flowerbed.

She never wanted to be responsible for that silly little rock anyway. Soon everyone would find out and they would likely drive her away. Then she could have a normal life. She did not think she was being selfish in wanting a little normal for herself.

Before she could tell Inuyasha the "happy news" however, she awoke one morning in a puddle of fluids that had exploded, boiling, from her insides. She fell into a dark fever and laid all that morning, sobbing, in a stream of her own blood. Kaede and their neighbors brought her broth and cold compresses in the afternoon, believing that she had been struck by the infectious fever people often get from the water. They did not think to lift the heavy blankets and Kikyou did not speak a word that entire day.

She could not believe that there was some mechanical defect in her insides that impaired her own fecundity. Instead she convinced herself that the problem was Inuyasha. Not that it was his fault, but rather that the demon part of him was somehow too heavy to carry. She neatly forgot the fact that humans had done this before.

Kikyou was not selfish at all. She realized the Jewel was too dangerous to be left to just anyone. So it was that when she went to meet Inuyasha that day on the hill, she thought she had figured a way to kill two birds with one stone.

And now the wombless woman prayed for an end to come again, so she could return to oblivion, to the darkness that never had to flee at dawn. Kikyou was not selfish. She knew what she had to wait for. But she hoped that soon the memory of those events, of the three people who died back then, would be erased from the face of the earth for good.

---

Kaede went out behind her hut to gather some tomatoes and other vegetables for dinner. A particularly enthusiastic firefly drew her attention to the bare spot in her flowerbed. She suddenly wondered why in heaven's name it was that, despite her skills in horticulture, nothing would grow there.


End file.
